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Turn #3
Initiative "Red"
Switching his gaze back to the centre, "Red" doubled his Terminators south to the central hills in support of the Land Speeders, and opened up on Scout #3, but only succeeded in laying a BM. Retaining, the Land Speeders launched a furious assault on the scouts, being carefull to remain out of support range of the Warhound, and the combined efforts of the Speeders and Terminators dropped two AV and a scout for the loss of two Speeders. In the roll off, "Blue" threw 6,6 while "Red" threw 'snake eyes' destroying the remaining Speeders.
To prepare an assault on the enemy Terminators, "Blue" Warhound sustained with all barrels and MW - - - and missed with the lot. Scout #3 advanced with 15 cms and also failed to score any hits, but the BMs were mounting up. "Red" moved his Assault formation intermingling it with the terminators in a forlorn attempt to provide a little more support, which actually allowed the "Blue" Bikes to clip the intermingled group, and break both formations, gaining control of the central objective.
"Red" Bikes then tried their outflanking manoeuvre again, and failed once more to enter the battlefield from the Western road, which allowed "Blue" to move Scout #1 to gain control of two objectives, and to move Scout #2 forwards linking up with the Bikes in the centre of the battlefield while threatening the enemy Blitz.
"Red" Devastators advanced to contest the central objective, "Blue" landed the Terminators to control their Blitz and an objective, which "Red" promtly contested by landing their Thunderhawk (and also denying "Blue" TSNP). And somewhere during the turn, the "Red" Thunderbolts stood down
End of Turn
"Red" tactical #1 recovered its composure defending it's own blitz, but the "Red" Assault Marines and Terminators remained broken.
Result
1-0 to "Blue" (BTS). Sadly, we ran out of time as it was by no means a forgone conclusion either way.
Analysis
"Red" had managed to consolidate back into their deployment zone, and still had the Bikes in reserve together with the Tacticals and Devastators and the Thunderbolts. The landed ThunderHawk was undamaged, and could be hard to shift - an assault or shooting by the "Blue" Terminators being far from certain.
"Blue" only just had the upper hand tactically with an activations advantage of 7:5 and a more central position, but had lost most of their assault capability, and would be hard put to finish off the "Red" defenders.
Final note is that, had we used 3+ armour on the Dreadnoughts, one would have saved against the "Red" Devastator shooting at the start of turn #2, which would have left the "Blue" Terminator formation intact. This in turn would have provided quite a shield for the two "Blue" assault formations, and even if they had ?been broken by the "Red" terminator assault (which "Blue" is less likely to lose), the survival of these two formations could have significantly altered the result of the subsequent battle. So "for the want of a nail, the shoe was lost . . ?. "
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"Play up and play the game"
Vitai lampada
Sir Hemry Newbolt
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Good Luck with your Scouts !